


Misery

by RobanCrow



Category: Shall We Date?: Wizardess Heart+
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 13:38:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8146061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobanCrow/pseuds/RobanCrow
Summary: Deep woods, and spell tags, and a flash of white charging his way. After things go awry in the climax of his main story, Azusa awakens injured and alone with his buddy, and something about them isn't quite right.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to my bro for likening my affection for Azusa to Annie Wilkes' obsession with Paul Sheldon and encouraging this terrible thing. :3c

It was becoming aware of the darkness that stirred his shallow breaths. He recalled a flash of white rushing towards him, and then this. How long had he been here? The ocean of nothing swelled around every part of him. Deep and unforgiving, it bore down on him. His heartbeat thrummed between his ears, faster now. He sucked in a deeper breath.

His eyes flew open, on his lips a broken cry.

_Azusa! You’re awake!_

A sharp pain wracked his every breath. His hands crept gingerly to the source across bared skin, eyes blinking into focus. He lay on his back, a ceiling of grayed wood above hanging low on the left side, and an old spring mattress and papery sheet below. His fingers grazed the swell in his chest, inciting a sharp, tremulous hiss.

A pair of hands closed around his, hastily setting it back at his side. “You’re hurt; be still.”

He blinked away the tears welling in his eyes. His attention refocused on the rumpled bob falling about his company’s features. _Morgan_ , he mouthed.

“I’m here,” they said, nodding emphatically.

_Where?_

“Somewhere I hope the others won’t find us for a while,” Morgan replied.

“Why?” he asked, a stab of regret as he spoke the word.

“Why?” Their lips curled in a frown. They settled gently on the edge of the mattress and gripped the fringe of their uniform skirt. He followed the shift of their jaw, the knot in their throat as they swallowed. Their voice returned soft, hushed. “You use dark magic. You tried to kill a unicorn.”

“Tried?” he uttered carefully. It survived?

Their frown deepened. “Klaus figures you’ll be deported to Hinomoto.”

“So?”

Morgan’s head hung between their shoulders, their bob a veil through which he could not discern their expression. “I wanted to spend more time with you,” they said. “I don’t want you to go.”

Azusa tested the strength in his legs, met with neither resistance nor pain, but the weight of fatigue. He ran a hand through his hair instead, unraveled from its usual braids, before letting that hand fall back to his side. “You really are an idiot.”

“Don’t be mean.” Morgan tilted their head enough to look him in the eye, humorless.

Azusa scowled back. A prickle of unease crawled across his nape. Nothing about the softness of their features could pass for menacing, but they were effectively looking down on him. He shoved himself up from where he lay, with a grunt punctuating why he shouldn’t have, and faced them squarely.

Wide-eyed, Morgan grasped at his arms. “Lie down; you need rest.”

“Couldn’t you have done something about this?” he spat. “Or is this what I get for being mean?”

Morgan pressed their lips together, averting their gaze.

“Gedonelune does have healing magic, doesn’t it?” he pressed. He curled an arm around his chest. “Sanatio aura ring any bells?”

“Aqua,” Morgan said, “for internal injuries, it’s aqua. Aura is--”

“Whatever.”

From where he sat, Azusa could now see the rest of the room. Tattered blinds, his uniform shirt and jacket cast across a chair that resembled a stool with its broken back rest, a dish bearing an unlit candle on the floor, and a whole lot of dust. His nose wrinkled in distaste.

He leaned closer, felt the wayward ends of their bob against his cheek, and muttered, “You’re really gonna leave me like this?”

They said nothing.

Azusa leaned back in a huff, cradling still the source of his pain. “I don’t believe this. Why?”

Morgan eased off the mattress and stood. “I can’t cast that kind of spell without my wand.”

“You lost your wand?” _What kind of wizard loses their wand?_

“I didn’t lose it,” Morgan said. “It broke.”

“How did you manage that?”

They were looking down on him again, with that unnerving, humorless expression. “You don’t remember?”

Azusa glared back, but didn’t stand to the presented challenge. “Should I?”

“You were there.”

There. Deep woods, and spell tags, and a flash of white charging his way. It should have run him through, the unicorn’s horn. He traced the swell delicately. It wasn’t a puncture wound. He could feel it still, the blunt butt as the unicorn collided with him; he could hear it still, the heavy crack of his ribs. It was his pendant that spared him worse.

He groped at his belly, tracing the bare skin where there should have hung a ribbon and at its end a lifelike butterfly. He could not see it across the room with his clothes. He felt his stomach bubble up in his throat. His blood ran cold. _Where is it?_

Morgan’s attention was elsewhere.

“ _Where is it?_ ” he cried, buckling, both arms wrapped around his middle. _Where is my..._

“I don’t know,” Morgan answered solemnly.

“Find it.”

“Azusa--”

“ _Find it!_ ”

Morgan was halfway across the room. “No,” they said. “It’s not here to be found. Rest.”

Azusa lifted his head to glare, catching only a glimpse of that rumpled bob as the door closed behind them.

\---

Warm light filling the room told him he had slept through the day. Morgan hadn’t returned. The haze of slumber still clouding his vision, he took measured breaths. There was nothing for it. He could not cast a healing spell on himself. He watched the warm glow intensify, painting the grayed wood above with color, growing brighter and redder as the minutes passed. The color peaked, and dimmed, and even when the gray was gray once more, he still had not been revisited by his buddy. He couldn’t stand it any longer.

A whimper rolled from his throat the moment he set to motion, the swell in his chest throbbing in protest, but he managed to sit up again. It wasn’t enough to sit. He lingered there one minute, two, until he had gathered again the resolve to get up. To find Morgan and get some much-needed answers. He eased off the mattress, the crease of his brow softening in relief. To stand from sitting did not aggravate his injury nearly as much as to sit from lying.

He moved languidly across the room to the stool, to his effects, and grimaced. The pendant really wasn’t here.

He snatched his jacket from the chair, and his shirt slipped to the floor. Bending over to pick it up was out of the question. With a huff, he instead rummaged through the pockets of his jacket. There was little of use in them; a small amount of lune, hairpins, and a few magic note sheets that Randy insisted he carry. Useless, he thought. He didn’t even have a pen. He tucked the items back where he found them and abandoned the jacket.

He made for the door next.

It opened with little resistance into a space as deep and twice as wide as the room in which he had been. It looked comparable to the room, with its rotting structure, and sparse furnishings, and a half-hearted attempt to sweep the dust to one corner. There was a portrait hanging on one wall, the glass of the frame cracked and shards missing from across the waist of the depicted figure. A few porcelain dishes filled a cabinet with a broken door. Two of them, a cup and bowl, sat out on a table off-center in the open space filled with fresh berries and water.

Azusa moved without thinking, sinking his fingers into the bowl. He popped berries into his mouth in twos and threes. His stomach growled eagerly the moment it felt new fuel.

Half the bowl was gone before he slowed long enough to take in the shape and color of the berries. He glanced sheepishly around the room, but Morgan was still absent. He could vaguely recall Randy identifying the berries by which were his personal favorite candy flavors. They were still distantly familiar. Nothing seemed poisonous. It was too late now if they were, and he continued to nibble on them until the bowl was empty.

While he pondered the consequences of gorging himself on berries he couldn’t reliably identify, Azusa wandered out the main door of the cabin. It opened to a porch, to a pair of wicker chairs and pieces of what might have been a small table. To his surprise, however, the railing was still intact. Beyond this were tall trees and thick foliage, perpetually clear sky, and that particular din of insects that he heard only here. If nothing else, he could be sure he was still somewhere in Gedonelune.

If he sent Randy a magical note from here, would it reach the academy? What would he say?

_Sorry I tried to kill the unicorn. Please heal me._

He grimaced. As if Randy would help him now. He had burned that bridge the moment he had laid his intentions bare.

He reached out to the railing for support, trailing his fingers along its length, until he reached the opposite corner of the cabin. He peered around the edge, into the thinly wooded area. With still no sign of Morgan, his head hung between his shoulders.

On the ground before him was a black, mottled mass, its shape unnatural of a rock. He stood up against the railing, squinting. At one end of that mass was a yellow point. A beak.

He staggered back.

“Azusa!”

He gasped.

“You didn’t leave any berries for me?”

He spun on his heel, each breath a cry and the prickle of tears in his eyes. “Don’t startle me!” he hissed.

Though they shrank back, nervously biting their lip, there was a glimmer in their gaze. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Like you didn’t lose your wand on purpose?” he spat.

“Don’t be mean.”

The glimmer was gone.

Maybe he had imagined it, imagined some sleight against which he could unload how miserable he felt. He clucked his tongue, and stared them down. They held eye contact a little too long, and he looked away in a huff.

“You should be resting,” they told him again. “It would do you better not to move around too much for now.”

“Obviously,” he muttered.

The chill of their fingertips grazed his arm. He resisted the urge to shudder, though they were nothing but gentle as they led him inside. Azusa dragged his feet every step back to the room.

“Oh, it fell,” Morgan remarked as they crossed the threshold. They left Azusa’s side to collect his shirt, and shook off the dust it had met with on the floor.

“I was trying to put it on,” Azusa said.

Morgan returned to his side with it, righting the garment and holding it open. “Let me help.”

Azusa obediently held out one arm and then the other, and without much effort was shielded against their chilly fingers.

“And the jacket?” they asked.

“Please.”

They helped him with that, too, before fastening a few buttons on his shirt from the bottom up. At his insistence, only those few. The less he felt constricting his chest, the better. On their tiptoes, Morgan kissed his cheek. They were smiling at their handiwork.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, tugging the wrinkles from his shirt sleeves.

“Now,” they said, “you should lie down.”

He grimaced. “I’ll sit.”

“But--”

“I’ve slept enough,” he huffed. “I’m not tired, and it’ll be easier to breathe sitting up than lying down.”

Frowning, Morgan conceded, “Okay.”

With a helping hand, Azusa sunk back onto the mattress. He leaned against the wall. Breathing deeply into his belly, he found with some relief that his words weren’t just a bluff, it really was easier to breathe while sitting.

The words rolled off his tongue without his permission. “Don’t disappear like that again.”

Morgan cocked their head. “Were you worried?”

“Your wand is broken,” he settled for responding, “you’re defenseless.”

“Magic isn’t everything,” Morgan snorted, looking down their nose at him.

He raised his right arm halfway, but settled instead for gripping the papery sheet beneath him. That look, he had not seen on Morgan before. He didn’t care for it, but it was best not to make idle threats while he was vulnerable. He sought another angle. “Where did you wander off to?”

“I went foraging.” Morgan withdrew a handful of seeds from a small, makeshift pouch, and rolled them about in their palm in appraisal.

“What do you need seeds for, stupid?” Azusa muttered, glaring side-long at his buddy. “We won’t be here long enough to plant them, and you’re not gonna eat them.”

 _Don’t be mean,_ he assumed they would say.

Instead, they smiled a little too broadly. “They’re not for me; they’re for the birds.”

Azusa thought of the mottled black mass and its small yellow beak, lifeless by the deck, and his stomach dropped.

“Azusa?” Morgan leaned closer, and he pressed flatter against the wall at his back. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Are you sure you’re all right?”

He offered them what he hoped could pass for a smile. “I’m fine--”

“You’re not fine.”

“Just promise me,” he urged, “promise me you won’t leave my side.”


End file.
